Museum growth spurt

The Witte Museum's Robert J. and Helen C. Kleberg South Texas Heritage Center has that new museum smell.

The crisp scent of fresh paint and building materials is something new for folks who work at the Witte.

“We don't get that here,” joked Shannon H. Standley, the museum's communications director. “We're 85.”

That distinctive fragrance is getting to be a recurring scent around town as the city's museums expand and upgrade their facilities. Recent developments on that front include the opening of the McNay's Jane and Arthur Stieren Center for Exhibitions; the San Antonio Children's Museum's forthcoming move from its current berth on Houston Street to a new home just outside Brackenridge Park; and the opening of the Briscoe Western Art Museum downtown, slated for late next year.

All that activity was a selling point for Steven Karr, who left his post at the Southwest Museum of the American Indian in Los Angeles to become executive director of the Briscoe about six months ago.

“San Antonio, I would say, is a town going through a cultural expansion,” Karr said. “That's one of the things that drew me to San Antonio. There is an uptick here.”

The newest development is the South Texas Heritage Center, which opens next weekend and which Witte President and CEO Marise McDermott describes as “seismically important.”

“San Antonio hasn't had a place where the land stories and town stories and culture stories are told,” McDermott said. “The Witte should have been the place (for that) all along, as the oldest, largest museum in Texas.”

The 20,000-square-foot center gracefully blends the new and the old. The starting point was the old Pioneer Hall, which was formally known as the Texas Centennial building and was one of several built across the state in the 1930s to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of Texas. A sleek new building of glass and steel — designed by San Antonio firm Ford, Powell & Carson — backs up against it, offering an expansive view of the San Antonio River and of the museum's new riverside amphitheater.

The center is a major element of the Witte's expansion plan, which also calls for enhancements to the main building and the creation of a Center for Rivers and Aquifers. The latter is part of an overall push to emphasize the museum's connection to the river.

The biggest slice of it all is the South Texas Heritage Center.

“This is a $10 million component,” McDermott said. “It's huge and very important.”

Roots for the center's exhibitions were planted in 2006 with “A Wild and Vivid Land,” a high-tech exploration of South Texas history.

That exhibit, which drew about 100,000 people to the Witte over six months, indicated that there was an interest in stories from San Antonio's past. And that was part of the point of the show.

“We wanted to know, do people want this? And the answer was, ‘Holy mackerel, yes!' That really reinforced to us that this was what we needed to do,” McDermott said.

“Wild and Vivid Land” served as a jumping-off point for the exhibitions in the new addition.

“We purposely said this was a prototype, to see what parts of the exhibition really worked,” McDermott said. “The parts that didn't work, we jettisoned. And we expanded everything else.”

Among the keepers from the original show is the Tejano freighter, an animatronic gentleman who tells stories about traveling through South Texas in the 1800s. Just as he did in the original show, he serves as a one-man welcoming committee. That element of the exhibit also captures the old/new vibe of the whole place: He's a high-tech creation, and the cart beside him is a real-deal artifact that was once pulled by oxen more than a century ago.

Upstairs, visitors will find a re-creation of Main Plaza from the mid-19th century, complete with a tiny Lewis and Groesbeck storefront and a replica of the front of San Fernando Cathedral.

The adjoining galleries in the older building explain, as guest curator Bruce M. Shackelford puts it, “how Texas got to be Texas.” They deal with ranching and the beginnings of the oil and gas industries.

Among the treasures displayed are a taxidermied longhorn, an elaborate Comanche headdress, a wagon from the King Ranch, a deep red sash worn by Sam Houston, Davy Crockett's fiddle and cases filled with enough guns and saddles to outfit a Western film.

Karr, the head honcho at the Briscoe, said he can envision some joint efforts between his museum and the South Texas Heritage Center.

“Collaboration is key,” he said. “I think it creates greater vibrancy.”

Much like the Witte's expansion project, the Briscoe compound is opening in phases. The Jack Guenther Pavilion, an events venue, is up and running; it recently exhibited “Night of Artists,” a fundraising exhibition for the museum.

“It was an opportunity for people to see a lot of very good Western art,” Karr said.

It also, he said, helped illustrate one of the main messages of the museum, which is that there is more to Western art — and there will be more to the Briscoe — than cowboy scenes.

“Our intent is to look at the art, history and culture of the American West through the context of San Antonio, South Texas and Texas,” Karr said.

The three-story pavilion overlooks the McNutt Courtyard and Sculpture Garden, which is currently open for events and will soon be open to the public.

The final piece of the complex will be the museum itself, which will go into the renovated former home of the Carnegie Library and, later, the Hertzberg Circus Museum. The building dates back to 1929, and historic preservation is a big part of the renovation, Karr said.

The children's museum, on the other hand, is getting a brand-new building. It will move from its spot on Houston Street to a former car lot just outside Brackenridge Park.

The museum currently fills 40,000 square feet. The new space, slated to open in the summer of 2015, will be 70,000 square feet, including a number of attractions outdoors. It will also give visitors the luxury of a parking lot.

It's not just about creating more elbow room, though. There will also be a shift in focus, said executive director Vanessa Lacoss Hurd.

“Roughly 50 percent (of the museum) will focus on math and science, and the remainder will be on early literacy, creative arts and social studies,” Hurd said. “We're really positioning this museum to play a much more robust role in supporting schools and the education of young children in our community.”

Having something splashy and new — like a new building, or, say, a new wing — helps generate excitement, said William J. Chiego, director of the McNay.

And he should know: The gracious Stieren wing, which opened in 2008, has had a huge impact.

Membership grew by 50 percent, and the museum is now able to present larger exhibitions and more programming.

“It increased our ability to really enhance the experience of seeing exhibits and collections,” Chiego said.

The new wing has even spurred more donations to the museum's collections, he said, because potential donors can see that there's more of a chance for those pieces to be displayed rather than tucked into storage spaces.

Attendance is up, as well.

“You need to keep moving,” he said. “I think you've got to give people a reason to keep rediscovering your collection as well as your changing exhibitions.

“To us, that's really what it's all about.”

dlmartin@express-news.net